Vibrant Souls
by Redemption's Avenger
Summary: The galaxy is in turmoil as the Iconians exact their revenge. Yet, in one small corner of space, a lost child returns to her home, never knowing she left. Discovering a world of warriors and semblances, of mysteries and Maidens, this lost child finds a secret locked away, and this power will change her and the galaxy. As shadows fall, the core of the night strikes back.


**First Ever RWBY/Star Trek crossover! Yay!**

 **Special thanks to HeartofFyrwinde for Betaing!**

* * *

So, this story is for my sister, who _loves_ RWBY. Cara Slane is her toon, so, hey, why not? Now, background. _  
_

Cara Slane was a colonist from the area where the Alpha Quadrant meets Beta, near the edge of the galactic disk. Her parents moved to a planet from origins unknown, with her as a toddler, however, the planet was assaulted by unknown forces. Very few survivors were left for the Starfleet responders to find. Cara was found in the rubble and was taken in by a pair of married officers. Cara grew up wanting to join Starfleet, with a vow to prevent what happened to her from happening to anyone else.

She has blond hair that she wears at varying lengths, with tints, and has sparkling blue eyes.

She graduated from the Academy as an Lieutenant tactical officer, and was assigned to the _Thunderchild_ as a phaser bank targeting officer. She was quickly noticed as her targeting algorithms were hyper-accurate, allowing for the escort to quickly take down ships _much_ bigger than her. Thing was, the algorithms would quickly deteriorate, and only Cara could make new ones.

Cara was promoted to Lieutenant Commander, and assigned a bridge post aboard a _Gladius_ _-_ class called _Ares._

She spent a year aboard until the Borg attack on Vega, where the bridge crew was killed and she was left in command. She met with the old _Constitution-_ Refit _Repulse,_ commandeered by newly-arrived/thought-dead-in-his-own-galaxy Wedge Antilles, where she beamed over a bridge crew and then-Lieutenant Tallasa Pjoh and both fought their way out.

She quickly ascended the ranks after receiving official command of the _Ares_ , and now, well, she's taking out her newfound rage on the Heralds.

* * *

 _May 4, 2412_

 _Edge of explored Beta Quadrant space_

 _En Route to STR-48318 System_

 _U.S.S. Nightcore  
_

* * *

Vice Admiral Cara Slane was out for blood. Sensors had detected Herald ships in an unexplored system. Why they were there, she didn't care. She had lost too many good friends to the Heralds, and she wanted to absolutely obliterate had lost her last ship, an _Avenger,_ to the Heralds, but she had immediately received command of a new class of ship: the _Nightcore_ _, Arbiter-_ class and successor to the _Avenger._

She had seven ships with her _Arbiter;_ the _Raging Rose,_ an _Venture_ _-X_ , and the _Falcon_ , an _Aves_ -class Science Destroyer. Cara wanted Wedge to join her, but he had to handle the offensive, so he had sent the _Cretan_ , a captured Breen Carrier, which would give the small task force support with Frigates, fighters, and support drones. There was also a small escort squadron comprising of two _Rapiers_ , a _Sao Paulo,_ and a _Mercury_ called the _Apollo._

" _Rose_ , drop out here." Cara said over the tacnet. "We'll call you in for when the Heralds are vulnerable."

"Copy that, _Nightcore_ _."_

The _Rose_ dropped out of warp and the three ships took triangle formation, _Nightcore_ up front, _Falcon_ to the right and in tactical mode, the _Cretan_ to the left, and the escort wing trailed the group, five light-weeks behind them.

"Dropping out of warp in three, two, one."

The three ships screamed out of warp, and a Quas suffered the brunt of the _Nightcore_ _'s_ assault.

"We've got two battleships, and five - make that four cruisers." Commander Rozhar said from her science console as the Quas was destroyed by the barrage.

"Crusiers coming about, and we've got energy gateways." Lieutenant Othrattro said from tactical.

" _Cretan,_ have your fighters deal with the gateways and the probes, and have them on harassment. Assign a frigate to each ship."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Load tricobalts, max yield, we're not pulling _any_ punches."

"Yes, ma'am." The Bolian said, smiling evilly.

The Heralds opened mass-fire, and the spray of energy beams struck the _Nightcore._

"Forward shields down to fifty-three percent!" Ops shouted.

"Pull us back and redistribute shields! Fleet pattern Falcon!

The _Falcon_ led with it's array of proton banks, the main cannons leaving damage for the _Plesh Brek_ frigates to capitalize on, tachyon beams stripping away the last of the shields on two Quas. The _Nightcore_ fired tricobalt explosives straight into their gravometric cores and sent their various pieces to the corners of space, and the escort squadron made it's presence felt by strafing the various ships.

"We've got solars!" Rozhar said; the Trill didn't want to see the prolonged effects of a solar beam again.

"Fighters!"

It was like the gateway was sentient, but it was really sensors from one of the enemy battleships that directed the solar energy. The raw plasma shot from the gateway, draining the _Nightcore's_ shields.

"Shields down to ten percent and failing!"

Before Cara could order a maneuver, a ship placed itself in between the beam and the battlecruiser. The _Apollo_ blocked the blast and collapsed the gateway, moving away and waggling her wings.

"Auxiliary power to shields." Cara ordered. "Helm, keep us moving."

Lieutenant Booker turned to port and fired the main cannons at a battleship, dodging fire coming towards them. The battleship took the barrage to her forward shields; sensors read the Vomph's rear shields were weakened.

Cara saw her opportunity. "Rose Blossom." She said over the tacnet.

The crew of the _Raging Rose_ prided themselves on a special maneuver that they called the Blossom. An adaptation of the Picard maneuver; the ship preformed a super-precise warp micro-jump, firing it's Spinal Lance as soon as it dropped out of warp, targeting data supplied by other ships. The end result was, to sensors, what looked like the Lance came out of warp itself, and the targeted ship had no time to react. This was the case with the battleship the _Nightcore_ had targeted. The Lance speared through the back of one of the ship's main spars and battleship was sent into an uncontrolled spin. Then the _Rose_ opened up with her impressive array of phasers. The Vomph was promptly set upon by fighters.

" _Cretan_ and _Falcon_ , take care of the remaining Quas, we'll take care of the remaining Vomph."

The two battlecruisers set upon the Vomph. The _Nightcore_ made pass after pass while the _Rose_ circled, giving the full force of the broadside.

"Gateways detected! Reading a squadron of Raiders, two more cruisers and another Battleship!"

Cara settled herself down, and prepared for another long battle.

* * *

The last ship erupted, sending out a shockwave that destroyed anything caught in it.

"All targets destroyed."

"Stand down from Red Alert."

The battle had taken two hours, where Herald reinforcements kept streaming in, piecemeal. While the Starfleet ships may had won, they were not without losses. Both _Rapiers_ had been lost, one with all hands, and only ten people got out of the other. The _Falcon_ had taken serious damage to their saucer, and Cara had ordered them to pull out. The _Cretan_ had lost both of her frigates and one of her squadrons. The kill counter for the group was 34 ships for only four; the Heralds had sent in groups only when the last group was almost finished.

"What the?" Rozhar said. Cara turned to her. "Captain, I'm getting some strange readings from an M-class in the habitable zone." She looked up with curiosity. "We could note it and come back when the War's over, or take a two second warp jump and get some scans."

Cara shrugged. "Why not? _Rose_ , we're getting strange readings from the third planet. Secure from battle stations and head back to the fleet, we'll catch up soon." She nodded to her conn officer. "Set a course."

As Booker reached for the warp control, several things happened at once. Rozhar yelled; "Energy surge!"

At that same moment in space, a large gateway opened. In the next second, Booker's finger landed on the warp button, and out from the gateway, a beam of energy similar to what destroyed the Preserver Archive crossed from one location to another.

The next second, Booker pressed down on the warp button and the warp nacelles glowed, drawing energy as they formed the warp bubble. The energy beam reached forward, breaking the _Nightcore's_ shields.

The slender ship moved forward, but it hadn't breached the light barrier yet. The crust-cracking beam lanced forward and obliterated the port nacelle, and penetrated two meters of the saucer's underside, leaving a scar four meters wide.

The ship launched forward, if you could call a ship moving at FTL speeds without one of it's two integral components moving. The _Arbiter-_ class battlecruiser traveled at warp 1.5 for three seconds before she fell back out, unable to sustain her warp bubble, and fell, out of control.

"We're caught in a gravity well!

"Stabilize!" Cara yelled as she gripped the harness that held her in her chair.

The _Nightcore_ entered the planet's atmosphere at the equivalent of one-third the speed of light. The hull burned as the heavily damaged ship careened towards the ocean.

* * *

On the planet, four girls looked up as a bright light burned through the sky, passing over their school and towards the ocean.

* * *

On top of their school, a gray-haired man watched this same event as the fiery streak passed overhead. The man watched as it disappeared over the horizon.

He stood for a second before sipping his favorite drink, then turned around. He had some calls to make.

* * *

Elsewhere, a black-haired woman watched the event as well, eyes glowing yellow.

The source of the flame disappeared over the trees. The woman turned around, walking towards the door.

* * *

"ALL POWER TO THE ENGINES!" Cara screamed over the chaos of exploding consoles and the rumble of the ship.

Booker was quite literally close to snapping the stick, as the helm console had shorted out; the only way to control the ship was the Manual Steering Column.

The ventral thrusters burned even brighter and the main engines pulsed to the point of overloading.

It was almost not enough. The _Nightcore_ groaned as her momentum shifted, and the cruiser went from falling to moving forward _and_ falling. She moved forward, and her engineering hull _just_ touched the water before she slipped forward, trailing flame from several places.

"Medical team to the Bridge. What happened?" Cara gasped, and looked around the near-destroyed bridge. Girders had fallen, one of the stand-alone consoles had completely snapped of it's mounting, a good amount of the consoles had either exploded or just stopped working. Three crewmen laid dead, five more were clutching _something_ in pain.

"Just before we went to warp, a gateway opened." Rozhar said, gasping and holding her side. "We were hit by a beam similar to what destroyed the Preserver Archive. It hit the port nacelle as we made the run to lightspeed. It destabilized the warp field and we fell out."

Cara processed that numbly. "What's our status?"

"Damage across all decks." Rozhar started listing. The Ops ensign was one of the dead. "Ninety-one reported dead, three hundred injured, and reports are _still_ coming in." The Trill paused. "Hull breaches on decks three through five, seven through ten, eleven, thirteen and fifteen. Plasma fires on decks two and ten, contained. We had some massive feedback from the loss of the nacelle, several EPS conduits ruptured and some of the plasma is corrupted. Shields are up to five percent but we've taken the emitters offline and are letting them recharge. And we've lost the port nacelle as well as cloak."

"Phaser banks three through seven down." Othrattro said, taking up the damage report. She looked, overall, fine. "We've lost both rear launchers and four of the main cannons."

"Can we get into orbit?" Cara asked.

"I'd advise against it." Booker said, guiding the battlecruiser over to a small island. "The engines are strained as it is, and I doubt we could get into orbit. We **need** to land."

Cara nodded. "Do it. Commander, can we contact anyone?" She asked Rozhar.

"No." The woman shook her head and slapped her console. "Comms are fried, and sensors are too. I can't get **any** clear readings..." She trailed off.

"What?"

"Scratch that." The Trill first officer said as the ship settled on her landing gear. "I'm getting _one_ clear reading. Warp Core signatures on this planet." She paused again. "And a _lot_ of radio signals."

Cara sighed. "We'll worry about that later. Roleph," She said over the intercom to the _Nightcore's_ engineering chief. "Get started on the repairs. Cannibalize the shuttles if you have to, but leave the Stalker, _Wicomico_ and _Retro_ intact. Get a crew ready on the _Wicomico_ to launch and reach Alliance space; we need help."

" _Yes ma'am."_

"Othrattro, launch the Stalker, see if they can see anything."

The next hour was a flurry of activity as the injured were tended to, engineering crews started on repairs and shuttles were broken down.

* * *

" _We both know that wasn't a meteor."_

"Of course it wasn't, General." Ozpin replied. "A meteor wouldn't be able to control it's flight like it did."

" _We lost track of the target somewhere over Vale's Ocean."_ General Ironwood said, and an holoscreen popped up, highlighting a section of ocean. " _I've had Bullheads scan the area, but we haven't found any debris."_ Ironwood paused. " _Oz, do you think that this is an alien invasion?"_

"I doubt it." The gray-haired professor replied. "We haven't done anything to warrant the attention of extraterrestrials. I think they stumbled across Remnant, judging the amount of fire that was coming from the ship."

Ironwood nodded. " _Still, we should be wary-"_ The General paused as he read something. " _One of our Bullheads spotted smoke rising from a nearby island."_ The screen from before changed to highlight a small, insignificant island. " _I'm sending a Airship force-"_

"General, think with your head, not your fear." Ozpin interrupted. "We don't want to send the wrong message by showing our military strength. I advise we send a Huntsman squad."

Ironwood nodded. " _Very well, but I want an_ actual _Huntsman squad, not one in training. I like team RWBY, but this requires some maturity. We need to deal with this quickly. Amity Colosseum arrived today and people from all over will be coming. Deal with this, Oz."_

Ozpin bowed his head. "As you wish." And with that, the link was cut.

* * *

"We need a shipyard."

Cara closed her mouth. "But I didn't say anything."

Roleph smiled. "But I knew you were going to say it." He sighed. "I can repair most of the hull breaches and damage to the weapons, but the structural integrity is iffy, but the rest of the damage needs a shipyard to fix it, and, last I checked, we don't have a spare nacelle laying around. We were lucky we didn't lose antimatter containment. Suddenly losing a nacelle like that when you're hitting warp doesn't help a ship's condition."

"Well, get working on comms so we can talk to someone." The Admiral said, sighing and picking at the bandage that was wrapped around her hand.

" _Admiral, we have incoming contacts."_

"What is it?" She asked, exiting Engineering and heading for the Bridge.

" _Three VTOL-grade aircraft, heading straight for us. The Stalker just saw them, they're having the same problem with our sensors."  
_

Cara swore. "Raise shields. Do we have cloak?"

" _Negative."_

Cara stopped in the turbolift and snapped her fingers rapidly, grabbing words. "We can't let them detect us. Rozhar, could we mod the shields to make us disappear? Like a visual cloak?"

" _I think so."_ The Trill said. " _But I doubt that just disappearing would convince them."_

Cara snapped her fingers again. "Beam a warhead above us and set it off. They'll be blinded by the explosion and we'll disappear."

" _I can do that."_ Othrattro said.

"All hands, brace for imminent photon torpedo detonation."

* * *

The pilot of the lead Bullhead looked over his shoulder. "We're coming up on the target." He said to the Huntsman team.

The pilot turned around and drooled at the vessel before him. It was amazing! It was sleek and looked super-deadly, even though it looked badly damaged. It was _any_ pilot's, engineer's, or weapons specialist's dream.

He noticed a flash of blue several hundred yards above the ship, and saw a small, black speck.

Before his entire vision was filled with fire.

"WHAT THE-"

He reacted on instinct. He spun his vessel around, bracing himself for the shockwave that was coming. The Bullhead was almost thrown into the ocean from the force of the wave. Only from the pilot's experience was he able to keep the VTOL craft airborne.

Shaking off his shock, he looked back at the island. It was aflame, covered in roaring _green_ flames. Pieces of molten metal sat on the shore.

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF DUST WAS THAT?" One of his passengers demanded.

"The target being destroyed." The pilot replied, bringing the Bullhead about and keying his radio.

* * *

"Did it work?" Cara whispered.

"We'll see in a moment." Rozhar whispered back.

"Why are we whispering?" Othrattro asked.

"I don't know, it seemed appropriate."

"They're moving off." Rozhar said, no longer whispering.

"So there are people on this planet. But why send a VTOL when you could send a starfighter?"

"Captain, my sensors can make out only two warp signatures, in close proximity to each other. I detected only radio signals and some early grade lasers, along with some late 21st century tech. And that's only close-range." Rozhar pounded her console again. "Something's blocking our sensors. The only reason I read the warp cores is because the signature overpowers the interference."

Cara sighed. "Ok, we need to check out this civilization. But first, we find those warp cores. Prep the _Retro."_ Cara ordered, referring to the _Yellowstone_ Runabout. _"_ I'll check it out myself. I need something to do other than staring at my damaged ship."

"Yes ma'am." Othrattro said, going about her task.

Cara turned and summoned a turbolift. It arrived and she entered, ordering, "Armory."

* * *

 **Author's Notes:** So, I noticed a surprising lack of Star Trek/RWBY crossovers, (As in NONE) so what better to use a crew an entire crew of OCs? Cara is my sister's toon, and she _loves_ RWBY, so I did this for her. This chapter went through several rewrites. I needed to get some mystery across, and where the ship is so damaged that it's not a major playing card. **  
**


End file.
